Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1887-02-19
STREET ~POlITENESS.
An Essay Toward Proving That Manners
should Make Women as Well as Men.

The ladies of this city are rapidly
learning to keep to the right N muddy
crossings, and are also adopting other
simple courtesics which are putting |
them to the front as the handsomest
and best of the sisterhood in America, |
but occasionally an obstinate, strong
minded, contrary specimen is ncoun
tered, who will persist in ambling to
the left, or doing some other equally
inconsistent and unnecessary act. A
gentleman who has travelled extensively
in Europe remarked to a reporter, while
discussing some of the characteristics
of the gcntler sex, that the men of
America are largely to blame for the
disposition of some Of the fair creatures
to take this surrender of every thing as
n matter of course, for they have so
long treated them with such gallantry
that many have been educated into re-
garding as a right what is simply Il
courtesy. In Paris or Vienna, for in
stance, if a street car be crowded with
males, and n lady should enter, not one
| Of them would venture to offer n seat,
and the lady herself would not expect
it. The women there have never been
taught that they had any more rights
than a man, and for that reason, ii an
American should extend a courtesy he
is accustomed to at home, he would be
! stared at as ansAnak, and even the lady
herself would be tempted to regard it
rs impertinent. And then he said that
the u%ngallantries to the ladies to be
met with across the Continent were
sufficient to keep an Americans blood
boiling, and he never wanted to see
similar rudeness extend to this country,
although the ladies sometimes invited
it by the mattcr-of-fact way in which
they prc-empted every thing in the line
of accommodation to which their fancy
inclined.
1t was Florence Marryat who once
wrote that Americans excelled all ma.
tons in attention to their women, but
that the American ladies were tn,
most mmannerly; but she awarded tn,
palm of boorishness to the men of hel
own nationality, which is English. II
New York, and even in cultivated Bos
ton, a churlish treatment of ladies il
q public conveyance is beginning Il
, make itself felt, and in the former cit,
, the Sun sneerin gly speaks of an Incl
| dent on a car, where a gentleman SUI
a rendered his seat as a "lost art" Tn
, average American, however, whethe
4 rich or lowly, is proud of II chance t
, be tender and chivalric to a lady, an
, he is amply compensated II his court'
~ be recognized rs a courtesy, and M
accepted rs right.
n It seems like a little thing to keep
the right on a muddy crossing, but thel
4 are many ladies walking abreast wi
d never stop to consider the limited pa
Il sage, and coolly appropriate it as thu
n would a seat in a car. There are mel
!. too, who do this thing, but as a gene
+. al thing they do 1t at the risk Of bcir
m pushed to one side, for they know tn
9. while the average mar will take a go'
Is deal off n woman he will stand no fot
,e ishness from one of his w sex, al
1t will elboS him into the mud witho
D. the slightest comprnction Of conscien
II he neglected to obey the comm
law Of keeping to the right. -iadi.no
oils News.